Blood for Blasphemy

The Swiss-based World Council of Churches (WCC) has taken a rare break from its usual condemnations of America and Israel to admirably speak out recently on behalf of Pakistani Christians murdered in July. Last year, the WCC, normally loathe to utter a peep against Islamists, issued an unusually substantive public statement against Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law, which predictably fuels violence against non-Muslims and critics of Islamist groups.

“It is with great dismay that we received news that two young Christians, Pastor Rashid Emmanuel and his brother Sajid Emmanuel, were shot dead by religious extremists in broad daylight in front of a district court compound in Faisalabad on 19 July,” wrote the WCC’s new Norwegian chief Olav Fykse Tveit in a July 23 letter to Pakistan’s president and prime minister. Tveit, a Lutheran theologian, noted that the murdered brothers had been arrested for allegedly producing a handwritten leaflet “defiling” the Prophet Mohammad. The young men, handcuffed together, were murdered by gunmen while leaving the Pakistani court. An accompanying policeman was wounded. The killers remain unidentified.

These gunmen perhaps were impatient for Pakistan’s legal system to punish the Christians, even though the Blasphemy Law does mandate death sentences even for unintentional purported blasphemy offenses. The two brothers were returning to prison, amid rumors that the police would ultimately clear them of blasphemy charges. Angry Muslims had demonstrated in favor of their execution, even though police reportedly realized that the “disrespectful material” about Muhammad did not match the Emmanuel brothers’ handwriting. During one demonstration, Islamists reportedly threw stones at the Holy Rosary Catholic Church. The Emmanuel brothers were Protestant, but the distinction was irrelevant to enraged Islamists hungry for blood.

Speaking for the WCC, Tveit told Pakistani officials that their Blasphemy Law “touches upon some of the more sensitive aspects of civil and religious liberty,” is “fraught with danger that can be abused by extremist groups when dealing with religious minorities,” and blasphemy charges are “arbitrarily applied and at times founded on malicious accusations against individuals and groups.” The law is “inimical to and destructive of the harmony and well-being of people who live together in a religiously plural society, and has fueled “physical violence, damage, destruction of properties and loss of life within the innocent Christian minority over the years.” Tveit urged Pakistan to bring justice to the killers of the Emmanuel brothers and to repeal the Blasphemy Law that facilitated their murder.

“We do not know what to do. We are helpless,” Pakistan’s National Council of Churches chief Victor Azariah told Ecumenical News International. Peter Jacob, executive secretary of the Catholic Churches National Commission for Justice and Peace, urged “renewed commitment” to repealing the Blasphemy Law. He told Asia News that “it is necessary to convince government and public opinion that these rules are dangerous, first of all, for the very survival of Pakistan.”

Christians comprise less than 3 percent of Pakistanis and are typically and understandably loathe to strongly denounce their persecution, lest their plight only worsen. Reportedly, Christian families fled the Faisalabad neighborhood where the Emmanuels lived, fearing for their own safety. They remembered last year, when similar blasphemy charges led to Islamist mobs attacking two Pakistani Christian neighborhoods, killing 7 Christians, and torching hundreds of homes, plus churches and shops. The Emmanuel brothers, leaders of United Ministries Pakistan, were arrested after an Islamist named Khurram Shahzad accused them of disseminating the anti-Muhammad leaflets, which conveniently and implausibly carried their names and phone numbers.

Mark Tooley is President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (www.theird.org) and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. Follow him on Twitter: @markdtooley.

ashok

HINDUS SUFFER WORSE FATE THAN CHRISTIANS IN PORKISTAN MIND YOU.

http://intensedebate.com/people/aspacia aspacia

Arafat claimed that Islam would defeat the West using our liberal laws and demographics. Perhaps we might consider outlawing the Qu'ran because it disallows for the separation of church and state. Why should we be liberal, and tolerant, when many Islamists are intolerant?

ashok, you are correct, Hindus are polytheists, and the Muslims frown on paganism giving no quarter. However, the people of the Book, are given some quarter, but still suffer persecution.

johnnywood

I can not understand why any westerner would willingly submit to such barbaric religion as Islam is. Especially women.